One of the 60,000 employees of Facebook giant has reached the breaking point, prompting him to leak mountains of confidential documents, hand them over to The Wall Street Journal, and most importantly, To the US Congress and the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the regulator of the stock market.
earthquake documentation
It seems that the earthquake preludes to the content of these secret documents began to form in an imminent investigation in Congress, a hunt within the Facebook company to try to find out who the leaker was, and a series of news scandals that published some of the contents of these files, which began to follow.
The Wall Street Journal promised more of what it called "Facebook Profiles."
Two-faced company
A report by The Times says that the image these leaks show is that Facebook is a “two-faced” trillion-dollar company, and it seeks in depth to understand its shortcomings and in minute detail - from how its applications undermine democracy to how it harms health The mentality of adolescents—but, at the same time, either unwilling or unable to address it, even when you try, it backfires amazingly.
The story of vaccine resistance
Among the most important files that were revealed is that despite a public pledge by Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to use the power of the platform to encourage people to receive vaccines for Covid-19 (Covid-19), Facebook researchers warned this year that the site’s pages are rapidly turning into "Hots for anti-vaccine content", with 775 million anti-vaccine comments posted each day.
This year, Facebook researchers warned that the site's pages are rapidly becoming "hotspots for anti-vaccine content" (communication sites)
Are you in the "x" list?
The newspaper also revealed details of Facebook's "whitelist", an "invisible" category within the system that includes nearly 6 million prominent people, from soccer player Neymar, to animal influencer Doug the Bug and former US President Donald Trump. (before suspending their account), who are allowed to break posting rules by posting extremist or harmful content, are not allowed to post it and may cause the pages of those who post such content to be suspended except for those on this list.
Typically, posts that violate the rules are briefly deleted or sent to human moderators for quick decision.
But according to the Wall Street Journal, more than 40 departments within Facebook have the ability to add people to its Xcheck list, a list of accounts that are excluded from Facebook's posting control.
The oversight board is just an interface
In May, the Oversight Board - an independent body created by Facebook in 2019 as a sort of supreme court to deal with its most vexing issues - requested a breakdown of how the oversight system worked on the company's X-Check list, and how often they were allowed to crack Publication rules.
The strange thing is that the documents mentioned that there are often no records of those who added these accounts to this list.
It became so difficult to trace that only a small portion of the publications on the list were reviewed.
As a result, celebrities were given an absolute right to post what they liked, while everyone was governed by strict rules aimed at keeping the posting of civilized conversations safe.
This information - released by Wall Street - has raised concerns that the board of directors, which includes 20 members including former world leaders and Nobel laureates such as Tawakkol Karman, is nothing more than a public relations front and pillar with little to no effectiveness.
Since it began hearing cases last December, the board has received more than half a million appeals, usually about Facebook's decisions to either delete or leave a post, but it can't subpoena documents, sue executives, or impose fines.
Each member gets a 6-figure salary while working an average of only 15 hours per week!
Neymar published screenshots of his correspondence with a woman who accused him of rape, including her photos and her full name, the posts were left for more than 24 hours and viewed by at least 56 million people (communication sites)
Neymar story
In 2019, when a woman accused Neymar of rape, the Paris Saint-Germain striker turned to Facebook and Instagram, where he has 161 million followers, to defend himself.
He released screenshots of the correspondence with that woman, including her photos and full name.
Posts were left for more than 24 hours and viewed by at least 56 million people, which is against the platform's posting rules.
Despite careful management knowledge of the software's problems, Facebook told the oversight board that data tracking was "not possible".
Hani Farid, a social media expert at the University of California, Berkeley, who testified before the board this year when the controversy over Facebook's ban on Trump was raging, said he was "surprised" that they - the oversight board - had little knowledge of issues such as online misinformation and extremism. , which was the crux of the issue.
"I'm not particularly surprised that Facebook may have withheld the information," he said, adding, "I've always thought the oversight board was just a Facebook PR ploy."
Facebook knew teenage girls' health was at risk
Another leaked report revealed internal Instagram research detailing how the photo app harms the mental health of young girls. The company has conducted several studies on the app's effects on mental health since 2018, all of which have come to similar conclusions, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In one such study, Instagram found that among British teenagers who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of them took it from the app, where an endless array of "beautiful" photos of peers and celebrities destroys their self-esteem, leaving them in a bad psychological state.
One 2019 report said: "The app makes 1 in 3 teenage girls' thoughts about their body images worse."
He added that the increasing rates of anxiety and depression were "unprecedented and consistent across all groups".
Ian Russell, whose 14-year-old daughter Molly committed suicide in 2017, said Instagram "helped kill my daughter" after she found material about self-harm and suicide on the "London Schoolgirl" account.
"These issues have been around for many years, and Instagram has sought to publicly downplay or distort them to indicate otherwise," said Andy Burroughs, head of child online safety policy.
In the United States, Senator Richard Blumenthal and Senator Marsha Blackburn announced an investigation, accusing the company of "covering up" this information.
Zuckerberg obsessed with the fear of shiny new applications such as "Snapchat" and more recently "Tik Tok" that it would replace Facebook to be the queen of social media (French)
Rewarding whistleblowers
For a Facebook whistleblower, the stakes are potentially huge for the leaker, but there are benefits too.
The SEC pays a bonus and promises to hand over 10% to 30% of any disclosed fines in excess of $1 million, which are usually triggered if the company can be shown to have materially misled investors.
The commission said last week that one informant had just received one of the largest payments, at $110 million.
Fear of new social media platforms
The documents reveal another troubling fact that Facebook appears to have little sense of how its algorithms handle users' behavior.
In 2018, the company tweaked the News Feed algorithm, the core of the main Facebook app that feeds posts, photos and articles.
The goal was twofold: first, to halt the ongoing decline in posts, as measured by engagement and comments, and second, to repost and improve “meaningful social interaction.”
To achieve this, Facebook has given less weight to professionally produced content, including articles from activist news organizations such as Breitbart, in favor of posts from close friends and family, believing this to be a safer option.
Behind this move was the madness that has prevailed on Facebook for a long time.
Zuckerberg's obsession with shiny new apps like Snapchat and, more recently, TikTok, has taken hold that they will replace Facebook as the queen of social media, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Indeed, young people view Facebook as the place where their parents and grandparents are, with Instagram becoming vital as the youth wing of Zuckerberg's empire.
This is why, the report said, the company has been very reluctant to move forward with changes that might benefit mental health but constrain growth.
The News Feed modification slowed the decline in engagement, but it also made the platform more toxic.
Publishers and individuals ramped up the extremist posts and sensationalism after they discovered, under the new system, that these posts led to more responses and spread more widely.
Facebook data scientists warned that the change had "unhealthy side effects on important segments of public content, such as politics and news".
Political parties in Spain and Portugal told Facebook that the change prompted them to alter their messaging to retain their influence.
One party reportedly said it had dramatically increased the number of negative posts "clearly indicative of a change in the algorithm".
Following this information, Facebook's "Integrity Team" introduced a slight algorithm change that succeeded in reducing misinformation related to health. But - according to the Wall Street Journal - when the team suggested rolling it out more broadly, Zuckerberg rejected the idea because it might reduce user interaction.